Elsa Maxwell
Elsa Maxwell was born May 24, 1883 in Keokuk, Iowa – it is said she was born in a theater during the opera Mignon. She was raised in San Francisco, California where her father sold insurance and did freelance writing for the New York Dramatic Mirror.
She was a talented musician with perfect pitch. She left school at the age of 14 and, without a single formal lesson under her belt, went to work as a theater pianist and accompanist. She began traveling the world following a Shakespearean troupe and vaudeville. She made important connections in her travels and began her career as a hostess after World War 1.
In 1919 Maxwell staged a dinner that set her apart as an extremely talented hostess. The dinner was held at the Ritz Hotel in Paris for Arthur Balfour, England’s secretary of foreign affairs. Maxwell’s parties were known for their inventive ideas to keep guests entertained as well as for the famous guests themselves. Maxwell created the scavenger hunt and the treasure hunt, and also liked to request her guests to dress in costume, sometimes as the other sex. One such party included a scavenger hunt in 1927 Paristhat inadvertently created disturbances all over the city. The guests were always famous or prominent figures in society such as Marlene Dietrich, who appeared at one cross-dressing party as a mysterious gentleman “flawless in top hat and tails.”
Maxwell moved to Hollywood in 1938 and there she wrote and appeared in several movies including appearing as herself in Stage Door Canteen, Rhapsody in Blue and co-starring in Hotel for Women for which she wrote the screenplay and a song. She wrote four books, was a columnist in the paper, hosted her own radio show, composed eighty songs, made regular appearances on Jack Paar’s Tonight Show and continued to organize parties.
Maxwell died in New York on November 1, 1963. Her sole heir was her longtime friend Dorothy “Dickie” Fellowes-Gordon. She never married but declared that her life was, “not bad, for a short, fat, homely piano player from Keokuk, Iowa, with no money or background, [who] decided to become a legend and did just that.”